“The Lancet haspublished an analysis of changes in life expectancy in Greece during the recent crisis. […]

Greek mortality has worsened significantly since the beginning of the century. In 2000, the death rate per 100,000 people was 944.5. By 2016, it had risen to 1174.9, with most of the increase taking place from 2010 onwards.

Greece’s mortality increase stands in stark contrast to global death rates, which fell during this time. Even in Western Europe, where death rates rose slightly overall, no other country experienced a deterioration on this scale. […] Among the countries included in the study, Greece’s case appears to be exceptional. […]

The report says that as part of the bailout conditions, Greece’s total healthcare expenditure (public and private) fell from 9.8% of GDP in 2008 to 8.1% in 2014. An article published by the Lancet concurrently with the paper notes that, under pressure from the Troika, the Greek government cut public healthcare expenditure to 6% of GDP.

But during this time, Greek GDP shrank by more than a quarter. So total healthcare expenditure effectively shrank by 30%.

Let’s stop playing ‘blame the Greeks’. Babies, adolescents and young adults did not cause Greece’s debt disaster. But they are paying for it – with their lives.”

“In other words, though Greece may be diminished, its catastrophe has offered the rest of the currency bloc a frightening example of what can happen when governments skirt the rules. If sacrificing Greece is the price for preserving the euro, so be it. […]

Ultimately, the debate comes down to one’s definition of ‘solidarity.’

Most Germans, for example, are convinced they showed Greece the utmost solidarity by providing billions in low-interest loans. While forgiving Greece’s debt might put the country on more solid financial footing, it would open the door to ‘moral hazard,’ the rewarding of bad behavior.

What that reasoning ignores is that Germany was the biggest winner of Europe’s bailout policies. No country has benefited more than Germany from the introduction of the euro, which has been a boon to its industry, fueling exports across the region. So if ‘saving’ Greece was really about preserving the euro, Germany was primarily acting in its own interest.

It’s easy to see why: The loans provided to Greece by the European rescue funds have put little German treasure at risk. In fact, so far they’ve generated a tidy profit.

Europe, to quote a Teutonic saying, has left Greece with too much to die and too little to live. […]

Instead of giving Greece that breathing room, Europe, at Berlin’s insistence, only agreed to give Athens more time to pay back its rescue loans, effectively delaying the day of reckoning.”

“Mr. Centeno’s claim that ‘we have all learned our lessons’ from the Greek crisis is mealy-mouthed. The Eurozone’s leadership doesn’t seem to have learned anything at all. The Troika’s disastrous handling of the Greek crisis has driven Greece into the worst peacetime depression experienced by any advanced economy in recorded history. […]

But even if Greece manages to meet its targets, there is nothing ‘normal’ about forty-two years of sustained fiscal austerity. Nor does having to maintain such a draconian regime in any way constitute ‘regaining control’. […]

French and German banks were effectively bailed out by their own taxpayers. […]

Bank bailouts are unpopular. It was politically more convenient to blame ‘profligate Greeks’ for the bailout than to admit that French and German banks had lent foolishly, still less that bank regulators had been asleep at the wheel. Even today, the tone of Mr. Centeno’s comments places all responsibility for ensuring there are no further bailouts firmly on Greece. […]

The Eurozone has also failed to take on board the need for active management of balance of payments in a currency union where fiscal transfers are limited. […] Countries like Germany and the Netherlands can run persistently large current account surpluses without sanction.

Running a persistent current account surplus in a currency union is beggar-my neighbour policy. The Eurozone is not as closed as it was prior to the crisis, so the whole bloc is now running a current account surplus, mostly at the expense of the US. But the US is becoming increasingly intolerant of being forced into the role of consumer of last resort. Beggar-my-Atlantic-neighbour is no more sustainable than beggar-my-Aegean-neighbour.”

“Unfortunately, the EU’s projections involve extremely wishful thinking. For one, they assume an impossible level of austerity: Greece must run an average budget surplus (excluding interest payments) of 3.4 percent of GDP for a decade, then 2.2 percent until the year 2060—something that no euro-area country with such a precarious economic history has ever done. Bringing those projections down to a merely improbable 2 percent and 1 percent, and using growth and interest-rate estimates from the International Monetary Fund, yields a very different picture: [Chart] […]

Over the next several decades, even in an optimistic scenario, Greece will have to borrow hundreds of billions of euros from private investors to pay off its official creditors. If those investors think the government’s debts are out of control, they’re bound to pull back—and Europe’s leaders will face yet another Greek crisis.

The obvious solution is for the EU to provide Greece with genuine debt relief. The sooner, the better.”

“This was a bailout? The word reeks of indulgence and implied disapproval. As it was often said, ‘The Greeks had their party and now they must pay.’ Yes, there was a party—for oligarchs with ships and London homes and Swiss bank accounts, for the military, for engineering and construction and armaments companies from Germany and France and the United States. And yes, there was a bailout. It came from Europe’s taxpayers, and went to the troubled banks of France and Germany. Greece was merely the pass-through, and the Greeks who paid dearly with their livelihoods were just the patsies in the deal. […]

So Greece, which is to say its creditors—especially French and German banks—received the largest loan in IMF history (relative to its ownership share). And that 289-billion-euro loan came largely from U.S. taxpayers. […]

But the damage done extends far beyond Greece. The cynicism and brutality of what happened there is for everyone to see. The fact that Europe imposed a policy of privation on one of its weakest members—not for its own sake, and not with any expectation of economic success, but to intimidate the Italians and the French, as the German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble conceded to the Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis privately in 2015—was not lost on British voters who chose Brexit in 2016.”

“In spite of personal appeals from the International Monetary Fund’s euro-supporting managing director Christine Lagarde to forgive Greece its debt burden and allow the country to be given a fresh start, the eurofanatics have been unrelenting in their determination to keep the debt anvil hanging around its neck.

Greece is in an armlock it cannot escape because of a combination of its debt burden and the fact that its membership of the eurozone means it can no longer devalue its currency. And the EU and Germans are determined to keep it that way to save their precious euro.

So despite the joyous news bulletins about the bailout yesterday morning, be in no doubt that this Greek tragedy is very far from over.”